Katie Bacon: What has this experience been like for you? Did youexpect Prep to take off in the way it has? It’s really become a phenomenonof sorts.

Curtis Sittenfeld: I would say the short answer is no, I didn’t expectthis. But at the same time, when I would talk to my editor and publicistsat Random House in the months before publication, they were alwaysreally excited and enthusiastic. So I always thought that if it wasn’ta bestseller they might be disappointed. I didn’t necessarily think itwould be, but I thought they kind of expected it. But then, as the bookstarted to sell well and did become a bestseller, they would say thingsto me like, “Isn’t this great?” “Can you believe it?” “I can’t believe it.”And I thought, You can’t believe it!? But didn’t you assume this wouldhappen, and didn’t you make it happen?You used the word “phenomenon,” and I think that if I knew someonewho had written a book and then things had unfolded this way, Iwould probably think, Oh, you must be so excited all the time! You mustbe so swept up in everything. I do feel really lucky, but my life is not thatdifferent. One big difference is obviously that in the past I’ve conductedthese interviews and now I’m giving one. But in a weird way, itkind of takes up the same time. And because I’ve worked as a freelancer,I’ve had the experience of going to a newsstand and buying apaper or magazine and having my name in it. This is sort of a differentversion of something that I’m familiar with. Probably a year from nowI’ll look back and think, Oh, that was exciting. But right now it’s not asif I’m walking around winking at myself in mirrors.

KB: In coming up with these questions, I went back and looked atsome of your interviews just to see the types of things that you’d asked.And I found a quote which I thought was funny, given the coveragethat you’ve gotten. In your interview with Tobias Wolff, you said,“Among writers, it’s a faux pas to ask if a work of fiction is true, and it’salso the first question that nonwriters ask. Does the question botheryou?” Could I ask you the same thing you asked Wolff?

CS: No, it doesn’t bother me. It certainly doesn’t offend me, because Ithink it’s a really natural question, and it’s something I often wonderwhen I read fiction. But there can be different subtexts to the question;some of them are sort of flattering and some are sort of insulting. It canmean something like, “I was so enthralled by this, and the charactersseemed so real—I just can’t believe that anyone could have made itup.” That’s a compliment. Or, in my case specifically, it can meansomething like, “I know you went to boarding school in Massachusetts;I know you’re from the Midwest. Clearly this is all true, you lack animagination, and you’re a lazy writer.” In my opinion, whether a novelsucceeds or fails doesn’t have anything to do with whether it’s true.It’s all in the execution. If you can get something down on the pagethat’s interesting, it doesn’t matter how much you borrow from real life.It’s not like the more you borrow, the less skilled you are.I also think it’s a question that’s almost unanswerable, because in away whenever someone asks you how much is true, what they’re reallysaying is, I assume a great deal of it is true. So your response doesn’treally matter, and the more you say, the more defensive you sound.KB: I’d like to talk a bit about literary fiction. Your book is consideredliterary, yet it’s also a page-turner in a way that reminds me of some ofthe books I’ve read that have no literary pretenses. Do you think there’sa movement away from fiction that’s self-consciously literary towardwork that’s just more readable?

CS: One thing I learned at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, from EthanCanin, was how to think about structure. I consider plot above everythingelse except character. There’s nothing I hate more than somebook that’s all just exquisite language. That’s so boring. I want there tobe forward momentum, so I take it as a really big compliment if someonesays Prep is a page-turner. Frank Conroy, at Iowa, would say, “Writingfiction is this combination of knowing what you’re doing and notknowing what you’re doing.” I very consciously think about plot andsay, I want there to be a twist here or I want there to be a surprise. In fictionI love surprises that are genuinely surprising and that feel plausible,too. I don’t know if I’m part of some larger movement. I doubt it. Ithink it’s probably just something that some people think about andsome people don’t. But I know a lot of writers who seem to feel likeevery word has to be a little gem and every paragraph has to be perfectbefore they can move on to the next paragraph. I certainly revise a lot,but I believe that the sum of the parts is what matters the most.

KB: Obviously the Iowa Writers’ Workshop had a big effect on you interms of your thoughts on plot and in giving you the space to write thisbook, but did it change you as a writer? Would you have written thisbook if you hadn’t gone there?

CS: I don’t know if I would have. I think while at Iowa I learned to beharder on myself as a writer. When I arrived there, I would write a storyand if I finished it I would be glad. If it read well or read smoothly, andif I’d thought of some clever turns of phrase, I would almost feel like,Well, that’s enough. But you’re kind of discouraged from cleverness atIowa, thank God. I think that if you have a certain facility with languageit’s very tempting to show it off. But that can backfire in terms ofalienating the reader. There’s only so much cleverness that anyone cantake, and ultimately the reason someone wants to finish a book is becausethat person feels invested in the characters and wants to knowwhat happens to them. I do feel that at Iowa I learned to write more sincerelyinstead of preening on the page.

I’m very pro-MFA. I know other people have mixed feelings aboutthis type of program. But I think, among other things, that it puts youon this path where writing can be the center of your life. Even if writingisn’t the bulk of what you spend your time doing, getting an MFAaffirms writing as a really big priority for you. It can help you feel okayabout the fact that your income might be a lot lower than that of everyoneelse you know. And if you choose to write a novel, I think that youhave more of a support structure in place and more patterns of how tospend your time.

KB: You manage to make the minutiae of prep-school, adolescent life—the obsession with who gets how many Valentine’s Day flowers, or howthe cool girls wear their hair—interesting to an adult audience. This isno small feat, given that you’re writing about a time of life when peopletend to be self-centered, and that these adolescents populate a worldthat’s more insular than most. Who were you imagining as your audiencefor this? What are the challenges of writing about an adolescent’sworld in a way that would be gripping to an adult audience?

CS: Well, this might sound very self-centered, but in a way I think I’mwriting for myself. I’m writing the kind of book that I would like toread. Also, not everyone picks up on the fact that the story is actuallytold from Lee’s point of view when she’s in her late twenties. That’s becauseI hate most books that are from a child’s point of view. I passionatelyhate them. I know this is a very big generalization, but I just haveto make it. I hate when you can feel that the character is much less intelligentthan the author who created that character. In my own writing,and I am sure I don’t always succeed, I am trying to avoid thethings I don’t like in books and include the things that I do. I alwayslike a little romance in a book. I like narrators who are at least a littleneurotic and who want things and are driven by their wants. And I sortof assume that other people share my tastes.

KB: A friend happened to mention this quote to me the other daywhile I was reading your book, and I was wondering what you wouldthink of it. It’s from a commencement address given by Meryl Streep.She said, “You have been told that real life is not like college and youhave been correctly informed. Real life is more like high school.” Doesthat hold any truth to you? How much does the Darwinian social structureof high school carry over into the real world?

CS: For me, post–high school life has not been that much like highschool. The biggest thing that’s missing is the intensity. There’s thistrade-off where you think, Thank God everything doesn’t matter asmuch to you as it did then. But then you also miss feeling that sense ofexcitement. I think it’s sort of like having a crush, where you’re kind oftormented but also entertained. All things considered, though, I preferadulthood. I’m not someone who yearns for high school. I just feel likeyou have so little autonomy in terms of how you spend your time. Idon’t like being told what to do by other people.

KB: The fascination you were talking about with that time and thedrama of it, do you think that’s true of high school in general, or do youthink it’s specifically true of the kind of high school that you went toand that you’re writing about in Prep?

CS: I think a lot of people had very intense feelings in high school—more people than not. I think there are some people who might feellike they weren’t intellectually stimulated in high school, and so they’rehappy to leave it behind. But at most boarding schools that intellectualstimulation does exist. There’s no ingredient that’s needed tomake life engaging or exciting that is missing from an elite boardingschool. You’re in a beautiful place, you’re with tons of people your ownage, there are plenty of romantic prospects, you’re intellectually stimulated,you’re physically active. And of course there’s a good chanceyou’re miserable on top of all that. But you can sort of feel that yourhappiness exists somewhere in the air. Maybe that’s what it is: that inhigh school you can feel the potential of your happiness, whereas whenyou’re an adult, your life is what it is.KB: Lee is, at times, a complicated character to like—she’s so painfullyself-conscious, so cynical, and she always seems to be doing or sayingthe wrong thing. Could you talk about writing a book with a main characterwho is not always appealing? Did you worry about alienating thereader?CS: Well, I’ve always known that some readers aren’t crazy about her,because I got that feedback very early on at Iowa. I’ve been very luckyin terms of the quantity and the general tone of coverage for Prep, butit certainly hasn’t been unequivocally positive. And some of it doessting. At the same time, nobody has ever said anything that’s totally unfamiliarto me. Every kind of feedback that I could get, I got for the firsttime long ago, so I knew that people didn’t always find Lee likable, andI didn’t try to change that. I feel that, one, she’s not really trying to present herself as likable,and to me, having a character be honest actually makes up for a lot.And two, when people say that she’s not always appealing, I think, MyGod, who is? I don’t know anybody—except maybe my mother—whois always perky and agreeable. So in that way, I think Lee is realistic. Atthe same time, I don’t like to read a story, let alone an entire book,where I really don’t like the main character. So if someone feels likethey hate Lee and can’t take it anymore, they should probably quitreading. Reading Prep is not meant to be punishment.I think probably the most loaded and severe criticism of Lee is thatshe’s kind of racist. And I would say that’s true in the way of a whitefourteen-year-old who’s grown up in Indiana and just hasn’t met a tonof people who are different from her, let alone lived closely with them.But I think a lot of her biases are disproved while she’s at Ault. Peoplehave asked me, Does she change? I think she does.

KB: I read somewhere that you didn’t let your parents read the bookuntil more than a year after it had sold. Why did it take you so long toshow it to them?

CS: Well, I just thought that it wouldn’t be my parents’ cup of tea. Mymother prefers biographies, and my father likes writing that I think is alittle schmaltzier. So I literally thought it wouldn’t be a book that theywould choose to read if it hadn’t been written by their daughter. And,in my mind, the fact that I did write it would only make it more weirdand complicated for them. They would think, Is this true? Did this happento Curtis? This does seem like Curtis, but this doesn’t. I think it’s justso loaded to read a book written by your own child. The parents in thebook are not my parents, though there are a few lines that the parentssay that my parents would say. But the funny thing was that when mydad read it, he didn’t identify with the father at all. I thought—eventhough I knew the father wasn’t based on him—that because I’m meand I went to boarding school and he’s my father and there’s a father inthe book, it would be very natural for him to compare himself. But heactually identified very strongly with Lee. I think it kind of stressed himout to read the book, and he had to hurry through it because he felt soanxious. But I don’t think my mother identified with Lee at all. Mymother thought—they both thought—it would have been a betterbook without the last chapter. I think they thought the last chapter wasunnecessarily graphic.

KB: The sex scenes are fairly explicit. It must have been a hard thing toknow that your parents were going to read them.

CS: I think it’s one of those things that as you’re writing you can’t thinkabout. It would just be paralyzing. There are plenty of cases where if Ihad known the level of scrutiny the book would receive I might havedone things differently. As I was writing the book, I knew people wouldwonder, Is this true? But I didn’t want that to determine how I wrote it.And I didn’t want to write the book in such a way that I hoped it wouldreflect flatteringly on me. I didn’t want to write a book where my maingoal was to make people think that I, the author, was a charming person.I wanted to do what I felt was in the book’s best interest, not in myown best interest.

KB: In an article about you in The Washington Post, the author commented,“Beyond the setting of Prep, the novel is more deeply aboutthe universal experience of being a teenager, and about learning tolet go of the weirdness, the damage of having been one.” Do youget the sense that reading this book has been cathartic for people atall?

CS: Yes, definitely. Probably the nicest part of having the book comeout is people saying, “I identify with this so strongly.” I’ve heard thisfrom people who are fifty and people who are still in high school, frommen and from women. Because Lee is the narrator of the book, thereader gets to know her every neurosis. But if you went to school withher, I think she would seem like a somewhat quiet, peripheral person.I think a lot of people see themselves in her. During high school theymay have seemed perfectly normal from the outside, but so much waswhirling around in their heads.

KB: Years ago, in 1995, you worked at The Atlantic as an intern. Didworking here and reading so much of the fiction that comes in over thetransom have any effect on your own writing?

CS: Well, I started submitting fiction to magazines when I was still incollege, when I was in high school even. And sometimes I would feelkind of apologetic about doing it, or I’d feel kind of embarrassed for myself,especially after something was rejected. And, quite honestly, whenI interned at The Atlantic, reading some of the submissions made methink, I have nothing to apologize for. There’s some stuff that’s reallygood, and there’s a lot of stuff that falls in between, but there’s plenty ofstuff that is absolutely atrocious. And the people seem to feel no hesitationabout burdening you with it. This was important for me to learn,because it helped me feel comfortable sending things out. I onceread an interview, I think it was with Kevin Smith—who made Clerks,among other movies—and the interviewer asked, Why aren’t theremore young female filmmakers? And Smith basically said that mendon’t feel reluctant to learn publicly and make mistakes and makeflawed movies that then help them to make better movies. Whereaswomen almost don’t want to burden people with a flawed product. AndI do feel like there’s something to be said for not protecting other people too much from your imperfections. How else are you going tolearn? I don’t think that you can learn to write a book except by writinga book. And then of course it’s going to be imperfect. I could look atPrep and feel like there are a lot of things wrong with it. But, ideally, Iwon’t make the same mistakes again.